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HAVANA (Cuba), November 15-16, 2004. The PIR Center for Policy Studies in Russia, together with the Institute for International Relation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba (Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales), held the international seminar International Security, Weapons of Mass Destruction and Nonproliferation: Problems and Challenges; the first Russian-Cuban academic meeting since the beginning of the 1990’s.
Participating on the Russian side were: PIR Center Director, Geneva Center for Security Policy Professor Vladimir A. Orlov; Member of the PIR Center Council, former Head of the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Yevgeny P. Maslin; Member of the PIR Center Executive Board, Assistant to the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation (2002-2004) Natalya I. Kalinina; Director of the Center for Strategic Studies Andrei A. Piontkovsky; the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Cuba, Andrei V. Dmitriev; and others.
The Cuban side was represented by: the Scientific Adviser to the President of the Council of State of Cuba Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart; the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba Abelardo Moreno; the Director of the Institute for International Relation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba Hermes Hernandez Herrera; and others. Ambassador-at-large of Brazil for Disarmament and Non-proliferation, Chairman of 2005 NPT Review Conference Sergio Duarte also took part in the seminar.
During the seminar, the contemporary problems of international security and WMD nonproliferation, the connections between disarmament and development, the role of the UN in the international security system, and the problems of confronting international terrorism were discussed.
In the opening of the seminar, the representative of the Council of State of Cuba, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart noted that, “Through the 25-year existence of the NPT, despite the very praiseworthy desires with which it was created, the frailty of the nonproliferation regime has become clear to all. By definition, within any program for the creation of peaceful atomic energy potentially militarily-significant resources are created. A political decision is all that is required for a conversion of these efforts. The authority framed in this treaty does not make allowances for the imposing of limits on the peaceful development of nuclear energy, therefore, it is practically without force in this context.”
“Despite the solid international legal base and the long-ago put in place multilateral institutional mechanisms, in recent years, the international nonproliferation regime has encountered clear difficulties. The DPRK withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and there are many questions concerning Iran’s nuclear program. As a matter of fact, the process for realizing the “13 steps for nuclear disarmament” that were approved in the 2000 NPT Review Conference has not been developing successfully,” PIR Center Director Vladimir A. Orlov emphasized.
In the words of the Russian Ambassador to Cuba, Andrei B. Dmitiev, “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is currently being seriously tested, in large-part by the position of the United States, as well as those of India, Pakistan and Israel.”
At the same time, “Russia has completed its initiative on reducing non-strategic nuclear armaments, with the exception of liquidating the nuclear warheads of the Ground Forces. The process of destroying nuclear warheads for ground-based tactical missiles, nuclear artillery shells and nuclear engineering mines is being realized as a result of the technological capabilities of the enterprises of the nuclear weapons complex and the real levels of financing,” announced PIR Center Senior Advisor Yevgeny P. Maslin.
Presenting at the seminar, the President of the 2005 NPT Review Conference Sergio Duarte made a prediction relating to the Conference taking place in May of next year. Currently, in his words, the main difficulties concern agreeing to the Conference’s agenda, in which it has been proposed to include the issue of the status of the DPRK and the possible contributions of the NPT to the fight against nuclear terrorism. “I do not exclude the possibility that the argument that the IAEA Additional Protocol should be made mandatory for non-nuclear states will be sounded out. Or, to put it another way, that the Additional Protocol should be adopted as standard for the system of guarantees in the development of Article III of the NPT. But at the same time, one has to clearly understand, that doing this through modifications to the Treaty is unrealistic. No one is trying to re-write the Treaty.”
During their travels, the seminar participants visited the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the largest such research institute in Cuba; where they were acquainted with the most recent developments of the Cuban biotechnology complex, and met with the Deputy Director of the Institute, Doctor Machado.
Further information on the seminar, including texts of the presentations, can be found online at http://www.pircenter.org/cuba2004/eng/. All questions related to the seminar should be addressed to Elena Polidva, Assistant to the PIR Center Director, by telephone at: (095) 234-0525 or by email at: polidva@pircenter.org
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